There are plenty of stories about journalists and minorities being the targets of online verbal abuse. This one from a Washington Post fact-checker is interesting, if only because the subject started asking questions of her abusers and found many of them backed down quickly when they realized they were shouting at a real person.

Blacklock’s Reporter, the paywalled news service covering the federal government, has lost a court case against the people they’re reporting on after they found out that one of the publication’s articles was shared among staff at the Finance Department who didn’t subscribe to the publication. The judge found the sharing over email clearly fell under the fair dealing protection.

CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais gave a keynote speech to the Canadian chapter of the International Institute of Communications today. The speech goes over the past four years of the commission’s work (what a coincidence, that happens to be the amount of time he’s been there) and is mainly self-congratulatory. He also criticizes Canada’s television creative community for overstating the effect of a reduction in Canadian content requirements, he criticizes the “news media” for “spilled ink and exhaled air”, he criticizes online media for not having the training to replace traditional media reporters, he criticizes Shomi for pulling the plug too early and being lazy, and he criticizes “naysayers” in general for making “false and misleading statements.”

Radio

Last week the deadline passed for the launch of the TTP Media station at 600 AM in Montreal. The commission confirmed to me that an application for an extension to that deadline has been filed, but no decision has been reached yet. The last extension said it would be the final one, but the CRTC said the same two years ago about 940 and gave another extension anyway. They have until Nov. 21 to inform the commission that they are ready to launch the 940 station, which has been doing some on-air testing.

Print

Friday was the last day for two managers at the Montreal Gazette whose jobs are being eliminated as part of the latest major staff cut at Postmedia: Photo editor Marcos Townsend and newsroom administrator June Thompson. The latter, who has been holding the newsroom together for decades, got a special drawing from the local cartoonist.

The CBC issued a press release defending its legal threats against podcast app developers who use ads to get revenue from those apps. Because the apps can be used to download CBC podcasts, it’s considered a commercial use of those podcasts, and the CBC says they need permission. The broadcaster is interpreting someone downloading a podcast using a podcast app as the podcast developer making “use” of CBC content.